Francisco Paco Carrascosa

Peering, watching, zooming in - into brightly lit windows, dark alleys and gloomy bars: Paco Carrascosa's latest work, the final piece in a trilogy of monumental stature, is an exploration of the night. The photographer, like an extraterrestrial who has just landed on Earth, marvels in awe at the orgiastic drama playing out in the dark: an eruption of colours, lights, shapes, reflections and perspectives. Yet gloom holds sway here: people stare at their screens, sit at tables or wait at train stations - alone, exposed, abstracted and detached. Even the title of the book hints at an uncovering: when the whisky maker and dream reader come together as allies in the night, all masks fall away and the world is shown naked - its innermost and most intimate features laid bare to the eye. The 2640 images in this work implicate us in this knowledge: for a moment we are participants in the lives of other people, empowered by the all-seeing eye of the telephoto lens. Unlike the masses of pictures offered for sale and decoration, mostly visual clichés or clickbait with louche motifs and celeb shots angled towards social media and sensation-hungry news outlets, Paco Carrascosa's photographs show us the real and the raw. His trilogy reaches its dreadful and beautiful climax here, full of sparkling poetry.